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拍品專文
Suspended between peril and pursuit, Buffalo Hunt channels the drama that coursed through Charles Marion Russell’s imagination. In 1905, Russell cast his first bronze depiction of the buffalo hunt, translating one of his most charged and recurring themes into enduring form. The painter of the open range had long found his truth in motion—hoofbeats, up-kicked earth, the tilt of a rider’s balance. Buffalo Hunt gives that vision lasting rhythm, weight, and permanence in bronze. The subject was familiar, though only through the lens of memory and imagination: the Plains Indian hunter closing in on a staggering buffalo, a drama Russell never witnessed firsthand but came to know through art, history, and legend.
Russell had painted the buffalo hunt as early as 1890, and he would return to the subject more than 50 times by the time of his death in 1926. When he finally translated the theme into bronze, it had become, to him, the defining theater of the Plains: man and beast locked in a ritual of necessity. “He has his last group in wax done, and it sure is a dandy,” wrote his wife, Nancy, of Buffalo Hunt upon its completion. “I think he will have good success with his work.” (Charles M. Russell: Sculptor, Fort Worth, Texas, 1994, p. 39) Her optimism was well placed. The finished bronze reveals Russell’s complete command of movement and emotion. The figures rise almost entirely off the base: a single tuft of grass props one hoof of the horse; a fallen buffalo braces itself against another. Like his contemporary Frederic Remington, Russell sought to deny gravity itself, but his poetry was different. Where Remington’s bronzes explode with bravado, Buffalo Hunt pays quiet tribute to the strength of both hunter and hunted.
The buffalo was more than a motif—it was an emblem. “For the Plains Indian the buffalo hunt was the ultimate confrontation between man and beast,” wrote art historian Janice K. Broderick. “To Russell, the buffalo was the most important totemic animal of the plains, and he adopted the buffalo skull as his personal mark.” (Charles M. Russell: American Artist, St. Louis, Missouri, 1982, p. 64) When Russell arrived in Montana in the early 1880s, the herds were already decimated. He may have glimpsed a few scattered animals, but never the full-scale hunt he so often depicted. Instead, he pieced together the scene from a blend of sources, from the paintings of George Catlin, Titian Ramsay Peale, and Carl Wimar to Francis Parkman’s Oregon Trail, and, crucially, the oral histories of Blackfoot elders who still remembered the chase.
Russell may never have witnessed such a chase firsthand, but he understood its essence. His knowledge of animal anatomy, honed from years as a wrangler and observer of frontier life, lent authenticity to every gesture. The bronze condenses that study into pure movement. “He was able to capture movement and dynamic activity in a way that eludes many other artists,” Brian Dippie has explained. “In his early depictions of the theme, such as his Buffalo Hunt of 1905, Russell focused on the chase, in which hunters on horseback pursue bison as they fly across the composition.” (Charles M. Russell and The Elusive Buffalo Hunt, New York, 2014) That sensitivity to motion and form had deep roots in Russell’s lifelong habit of modeling.
As a boy, he modeled horses from flower-making wax stolen from his sister’s supplies. “Girls used to make wax flowers,” he later wrote. “I would steel wax and make toy horses green and red ones.” (Montana’s Charlie Russell, Helena, Montana, 2014, p. 293) In his father’s brickyard, he came to understand the material’s temperament and could quickly identify native clays fit for modeling. Even as a cowboy in Montana, he kept sculpting: friends remembered him shaping wax herds while drinking and talking in Great Falls saloons. “When we got up from the table,” one recalled, “there would be a scramble to see who could get them first.” (Montana’s Charlie Russell, p. 295) For Russell, working in three dimensions was never secondary. It was a way of seeing. Even for his paintings, he sculpted forms to study how light and shadow played across the contours of his figures.
Nancy, ever the pragmatist, recognized bronze as a means of preservation—both artistic and financial—for her husband’s sculpted forms. Her practicality proved timely: bronze was fast becoming the medium through which Western sculptors achieved permanence and acclaim. During their 1904 trip to New York, Western artist Charles Schreyvogel introduced the couple to Roman Bronze Works, whose use of the lost-wax method had elevated both the precision and the reputation of Remington’s bronzes. The first version of Buffalo Hunt (likely the cast in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas) was cast the following year, becoming one of Russell’s earliest works in the medium. Though Russell modeled constantly, he never lost affection for his original wax and plaster forms, and ultimately produced only 46 bronzes in his career—each one deeply personal.
According to Rick Stewart, “Russell apparently only had one cast of Buffalo Hunt made at the Roman Bronze Works between 1902 and 1919...Since the Roman Bronze Works records for 1920-26 have not survived, it is not known whether Mrs. Russell ordered any additional casts of the subject prior to her husband’s death...The actual number of casts of Buffalo Hunt produced during the Russells’ lifetimes may never be known. Homer Britzman, whose 1949 compilation of Russell Bronze subjects was drawn from Mrs. Russell’s records, claimed that a total of nine casts had been made, but nearly twice that number seem to exist in public and private collections today. Only three casts are clearly documented prior to 1928.” (Charles M. Russell: Sculptor, Fort Worth, Texas, 1994, pp. 157, 158)
Russell had painted the buffalo hunt as early as 1890, and he would return to the subject more than 50 times by the time of his death in 1926. When he finally translated the theme into bronze, it had become, to him, the defining theater of the Plains: man and beast locked in a ritual of necessity. “He has his last group in wax done, and it sure is a dandy,” wrote his wife, Nancy, of Buffalo Hunt upon its completion. “I think he will have good success with his work.” (Charles M. Russell: Sculptor, Fort Worth, Texas, 1994, p. 39) Her optimism was well placed. The finished bronze reveals Russell’s complete command of movement and emotion. The figures rise almost entirely off the base: a single tuft of grass props one hoof of the horse; a fallen buffalo braces itself against another. Like his contemporary Frederic Remington, Russell sought to deny gravity itself, but his poetry was different. Where Remington’s bronzes explode with bravado, Buffalo Hunt pays quiet tribute to the strength of both hunter and hunted.
The buffalo was more than a motif—it was an emblem. “For the Plains Indian the buffalo hunt was the ultimate confrontation between man and beast,” wrote art historian Janice K. Broderick. “To Russell, the buffalo was the most important totemic animal of the plains, and he adopted the buffalo skull as his personal mark.” (Charles M. Russell: American Artist, St. Louis, Missouri, 1982, p. 64) When Russell arrived in Montana in the early 1880s, the herds were already decimated. He may have glimpsed a few scattered animals, but never the full-scale hunt he so often depicted. Instead, he pieced together the scene from a blend of sources, from the paintings of George Catlin, Titian Ramsay Peale, and Carl Wimar to Francis Parkman’s Oregon Trail, and, crucially, the oral histories of Blackfoot elders who still remembered the chase.
Russell may never have witnessed such a chase firsthand, but he understood its essence. His knowledge of animal anatomy, honed from years as a wrangler and observer of frontier life, lent authenticity to every gesture. The bronze condenses that study into pure movement. “He was able to capture movement and dynamic activity in a way that eludes many other artists,” Brian Dippie has explained. “In his early depictions of the theme, such as his Buffalo Hunt of 1905, Russell focused on the chase, in which hunters on horseback pursue bison as they fly across the composition.” (Charles M. Russell and The Elusive Buffalo Hunt, New York, 2014) That sensitivity to motion and form had deep roots in Russell’s lifelong habit of modeling.
As a boy, he modeled horses from flower-making wax stolen from his sister’s supplies. “Girls used to make wax flowers,” he later wrote. “I would steel wax and make toy horses green and red ones.” (Montana’s Charlie Russell, Helena, Montana, 2014, p. 293) In his father’s brickyard, he came to understand the material’s temperament and could quickly identify native clays fit for modeling. Even as a cowboy in Montana, he kept sculpting: friends remembered him shaping wax herds while drinking and talking in Great Falls saloons. “When we got up from the table,” one recalled, “there would be a scramble to see who could get them first.” (Montana’s Charlie Russell, p. 295) For Russell, working in three dimensions was never secondary. It was a way of seeing. Even for his paintings, he sculpted forms to study how light and shadow played across the contours of his figures.
Nancy, ever the pragmatist, recognized bronze as a means of preservation—both artistic and financial—for her husband’s sculpted forms. Her practicality proved timely: bronze was fast becoming the medium through which Western sculptors achieved permanence and acclaim. During their 1904 trip to New York, Western artist Charles Schreyvogel introduced the couple to Roman Bronze Works, whose use of the lost-wax method had elevated both the precision and the reputation of Remington’s bronzes. The first version of Buffalo Hunt (likely the cast in the collection of the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas) was cast the following year, becoming one of Russell’s earliest works in the medium. Though Russell modeled constantly, he never lost affection for his original wax and plaster forms, and ultimately produced only 46 bronzes in his career—each one deeply personal.
According to Rick Stewart, “Russell apparently only had one cast of Buffalo Hunt made at the Roman Bronze Works between 1902 and 1919...Since the Roman Bronze Works records for 1920-26 have not survived, it is not known whether Mrs. Russell ordered any additional casts of the subject prior to her husband’s death...The actual number of casts of Buffalo Hunt produced during the Russells’ lifetimes may never be known. Homer Britzman, whose 1949 compilation of Russell Bronze subjects was drawn from Mrs. Russell’s records, claimed that a total of nine casts had been made, but nearly twice that number seem to exist in public and private collections today. Only three casts are clearly documented prior to 1928.” (Charles M. Russell: Sculptor, Fort Worth, Texas, 1994, pp. 157, 158)